Another part which translated to “Project died” actually meant “be shelved” or “put in storage.” While Harada says that the status of the project isn’t different from his last update, he admits that this isn’t necessarily a nice thing. “We are still hopeful that Tekken X Street Fighter will resume development when the opportunity arises. However, such a title cannot be moved just for the convenience of one company in terms of marketing and branding, and it also affects each other’s development resources. For now, we are just waiting for the right opportunity.”

Back in 2019, Harada said that Tekken X Street Fighter was becoming harder to justify. The success of Tekken 7, which has sold seven million copies as of March 2021, is no doubt a factor and it continues to receive new DLC characters and stages. There’s also Capcom’s involvement and given how the company has other things going on (like the rumored Street Fighter 6), it may be a while before the fated crossover ever happens.

Nevertheless, it isn’t dead so there is some hope. Stay tuned in the coming months and/or years to see if that ever materializes into something.

God damn subtitle problem again. I’m so tired. Sorry about that. https://t.co/46KGwjCKYn

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) June 21, 2021

And today, we got official confirmation that was the case. “Development stopped but we got about 30 percent done,” Harada said in the latest episode of Harada’s Bar, his video talk show. “We even had motions, which you can see reflected in Akuma.”

“We were working really hard on that, we really were,” Harada added. “Wish we could show you the models and stuff. We had really nice models. I really wanted to show them Chun-Li. I wanted to show you guys all the characters. We were pretty confident.”Harada also said that while he would like to have shown off the models and concept art the team had, it can’t happen without Capcom’s permission.

This isn’t a huge surprise. Harada had previously said that making Tekken X Street Fighter was harder to justify given the success of Tekken 7. “Traditionally, the life cycle of a fighting game is very short – maybe one or two years and then you make a sequel. But Tekken 7 is very successful as a service game with its DLC. That makes it much harder to justify releasing another game, while Tekken 7 is still doing so well.”

It’s a shame that the game will never release, as several people told Harada they were still excited for it when he asked about the game in a Twitter poll in 2019. Officially canceling the game, however, does let fighting game fans move on. Now if we could only get Rockstar to admit that Agent is officially canceled.

Let me be honest. What percentage of you are really waiting for "TEKKEN x Street Fighter"?

(My marketing view is that TK7 and SFV are selling very well, so there is no opportunity to drop TK x SF on the market).

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) December 13, 2019

Crossovers are a great way to keep franchises relevant with new iterations, but also inject new energy into them with spirited experimentation and fresh ideas. It might sound odd, but honestly gamers don’t need much to make it work. Just give them a fighting system that respects the sensibilities of both games, include the most popular characters from each, and maybe throw in a story about interdimensional time travel or any real reason to get different characters together, and boom, you have a solid cross over fighting game. As such, Capcom has gone down this road more than a couple of times over the years, their perhaps most prominent example of which is Street Fighter X Tekken.

The gameplay style and artistic direction of Street Fighter X Tekken was more or less in line with what fans of Street Fighter would expect, with the more cartoony looking characters and very fast, flashy animations. Even still, Tekken Characters still played similarly to how they do in Tekken games, with each limb bring mapped to one of the main face buttons and combos working similarly to Tekken games as well.

So it was pretty much a perfect balance; respecting Tekken fans with control schemes that don’t ignore the years and years of experience that Tekken fans have with their favorite characters, but still housing it all into a feel and tone that largely fits with Street Fighter and that Capcom style of fighting game. As you might expect, the game reviewed well and pretty much got solid 8’s across the board and ended up getting ported to almost every available platform at the time, including the PS3, 360, Vita, and Nvidia’s Shield. Remember that?

As part of the deal with making Street Fighter X Tekken, supposedly, another game was to be made by Namco, the home of Tekken, with the same idea as Street Fighter X Tekken but reversed, called, as you might have have guessed, Tekken X Street Fighter. This game would bring together the same cast as the first game, but instead of it favoring the art and gameplay stylings of Capcom’s Street Fighter, this time, it would embody the three-dimensional, combo-heavy, technical methodologies of Tekken.

Together, both games would be the perfect crossover duo. Taking turns favoring the other, and ensuring that fans of either franchise would have a great time with at least one of them. So as a game franchise that reviewed pretty well, and was thoroughly distributed to nearly everything you could want it on back in 2012, why have we not gotten it’s mysterious other half yet? Where the hell is Tekken X Street Fighter?

If you try to get answers out of Namco, you’ll likely be disappointed and empty-handed. However, thankfully, certain individuals have piped up to some degree about it, and we can stitch that together with some other statements from the past. Five years ago, in 2015, the Tekken series lead producer, Katsuhiro Harada, did publicly say that the game was “well into development”. He went on to also declare that “It might seem like we haven’t started on it at all, but the character lineup has been decided upon since a very long time ago, and we’ve already finished the polygon models, moves, and systems,” Which sounds like a fairly confident endorsement of the health of the project.

However, that was several years ago. Since then, we’ve seen Capcom’s Street Fighter 5 and Namco’s Tekken 7 come and go, as well as several other projects that have taken much of Namco’s time and resources into other directions. According to hearsay throughout the internet, Tekken X Street Fighter was initially supposed to launch on the PS3 and 360, just as Street Fighter X Tekken did, but was put on hold around 2016. Harada offered up his take saying, “Yes, I am emotionally up for it. I still want to release the game. However, as much as I want to proceed with the project, things have changed a lot since 2012. So I need to get approval and I need to speak to Capcom again as well — they may say ‘no’ now. I was excited to see how well Bandai Namco could convert 2D characters like Akuma from Street Fighter” He went on to add “I was excited about that and I have passion for it, but my logical and business thinking has me wondering if I really should do it.” So without question at that point, the state of the game was not nearly as promising as it was back in 2012 or even in 2015.

Shining a little more like on the subject, Harada has gone on to say “When we were ready to progress further with the project, Capcom released Street Fighter V and then we released Tekken 7. Those titles are some of the best fighting games ever and they became very successful. So then I started to wonder, do I really want to attempt to compete with these huge titles? It could end up splitting the community. That was a serious consideration from the marketing perspective. So I decided to hold off releasing the game for one or two years. Following that, Tekken 7 is now doing very well as a service game. Traditionally, the life cycle of a fighting game is very short – maybe one or two years and then you make a sequel. But Tekken 7 is very successful as a service game with its DLC. That makes it much harder to justify releasing another game, while Tekken 7 is still doing so well.”

So it seems that the reason we don’t have Tekken X Street Fighter isn’t so much about some sort of chaotic development shift, or even the somewhat underwhelming sales of Street Fighter X Tekken, but it actually has much more to do with Namco not wanting to self-cannibalize. They know who they’re audience is, and they don’t want to split them up while they’re clearly still enjoying Tekken 7, which by all accounts, is easily one of the best entries in the entire series.

This is understandable for the time being, as neither fighting game would benefit from only having half of the Namco fighting game audience playing it. Tekken 7 is still going strong with plenty of DLC and a strong player-base online, so it makes perfect sense that Namco would want to ride that out at least another year or so. However, with the next generation of consoles looming on the horizon, as well as Harada teasing the game in the form of a twitter poll, which, the overwhelming majority of users did respond favorably to the idea of the game, one couldn’t be blamed for suspecting that the Tekken X Street Fighter could be closer than we think.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

When Street Fighter X Tekken released, it was the first game of what was promised to be a two part venture between Capcom and Namco. The first game in that series wasn’t well received for a variety of reasons (though it got updated pretty well to be a solid title as time went on). But the second half on Namco’s part, Tekken X Street Fighter, never materialized. And now the lead of the Tekken series asks…does anyone still want this?

On his official Twitter account, Katsuhiro Harada asked fans if they’re still waiting for the game. Ironically, the strong positions of the individual entries of Tekken and Street Fighter series has made him doubt the market has a place for the crossover. It’s not the first time he’s communicated that the game would be hard to justify releasing.

Do you still want Tekken X Street Fighter? Well, Harada actually included a poll in his tweet. If you still want to see the game, vote below. I don’t know if it will matter in the end, but who knows, it can’t hurt.

Let me be honest. What percentage of you are really waiting for "TEKKEN x Street Fighter"?

(My marketing view is that TK7 and SFV are selling very well, so there is no opportunity to drop TK x SF on the market).

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) December 13, 2019

It was all the way back in 2010 when the ambitious Street Fighter and Tekken crossover titles were announced. On paper, it seemed like a brilliant idea. Capcom would do a crossover with characters from the two franchises in their Street Fighter influenced style, then Bandai Namco would do one in their Tekken-inspired style. In execution, however, something went wrong.

Only the first part of that idea ever came out with Street Fight x Tekken, and it released in 2012 to mixed reviews (due to not being what people expected and the in-game gem system that many found confusing and an unneeded bog on gameplay) and disappointing sales. Since then, the Bandai Namco part of the crossover has faded into memory, with many assuming it’ll never happen. But Tekken lead designer Katsuhiro Harada still has it on his mind.

In an interview with VGC, Harada mulled on his thoughts of the game. In 2016, the game was said to be “on hold”, with no updates since then. He said the project actually did reach about 30% completion, but the success of Tekken 7, coupled with the drastically changed gaming landscape of today – particularly with the games as a service model – makes him cautious of going into it again.

“Yes, I am emotionally up for it,” he said. “I still want to release the game. However, as much as I want to proceed with the project, things have changed a lot since 2012. So I need to get approval and I need to speak to Capcom again as well — they may say ‘no’ now.

“Traditionally, the life cycle of a fighting game is very short – maybe one or two years and then you make a sequel. But Tekken 7 is very successful as a service game with its DLC. That makes it much harder to justify releasing another game, while Tekken 7 is still doing so well.”

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Tekken X Street Fighter, but you never know. A lot of once-thought-dead or unlikely projects have ended up coming to fruition in the past. Think of Duke Nukem Forever, The Last Guardian, or the sequel to Beyond Good and Evil. Who knows- in the end, Harada might get to play with the Street Fighter cast after all.

Do you remember Street Fighter X Tekken? The crossover fighter between the two major Japanese fighting game franchises was announced right alongside Tekken X Street Fighter. Where Street Fighter X Tekken was going to be headed by Capcom, and translate both series’ gameplay into the Street Fighter style, Tekken X Street Fighter would be put out by Namco, and translate the gameplay into the Tekken style.

Street Fighter X Tekken came out as planned, and ended up being a controversial title due to its use of microtransactions, underperforming as a result. However, Tekken X Street Fighter never did come out. In the period since, we have had Katsuhiro Harada, the producer of Tekken, and the man who was supposed to be leading work on Tekken X Street Fighter, work on Tekken 7 and Pokken Tournament, but there has been no sign of Tekken X Street Fighter. Last we heard, the game was on hold, though we had also been told that the development could eventually resume.

And that’s what might have happened. Speaking at a year-end drinking party in Japan, Harada said (courtesy of OU Gaming) that development on the game is 30% done, which seems to suggest that it has resumed active work—either that, or it was at 30% back when development was suspended, and he’s just messing around with everyone.

Hopefully, Tekken X Street Fighter does come out, and ends up being better than its counterpart when it does. Though at this point, given the flux it is in, it is hard to tell exactly what systems the game will release for, if/when it does.

Quantum Break 2

We know that Remedy Entertainment’s project codenamed P7 will be showcased at E3 2018. That’s a multiplatform project though – what about rumours of Quantum Break 2? Is it possible that P7 is actually Quantum Break 2 and we’ll see it appear? Well, no. The IP belongs to Microsoft and it’s unlikely to ever come to other platforms, let-alone be the same multiplatform project that Remedy is currently working on. While a sequel isn’t out of the question, it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing it this year.

Tamagotchi Game from Bandai Namco

UP2Play had an interesting list on its website back in March. This list stated that many games like Bloodborne 2 and a new Tamagotchi game for Switch would likely appear at E3. There was a lack of sources or validation (and some games on that list have been confirmed as not appearing at the Expo this year). And even if the Tamagotchi game seems…weird, it’s not impossible. Apparently, the original Tamagotchi has made a comeback in Japan. With the Switch reaching incredible heights in popularity since launch, it wouldn’t be the weirdest idea to have Tamagotchi on there, especially if it wants to cater to the mainstream population. Then again, it still sounds ridiculous so we’re going to wait for E3 to be extra, extra sure.

Oh hey, remember Tekken X Street Fighter, Bandai Namco’s take on the crossover that was meant for the Tekken engine? The fighting game has been in limbo for years now with no signs of escape. By the looks of it, Tekken series producer and director Katsuhiro Harada doesn’t think it’ll arrive anytime soon either.

Speaking to Finder during a recent tour of Australia, Harada said that, “The game was in development for a while, but it came down to the timing of Street Fighter V coming out [in early 2016] – and Capcom was putting a lot of effort into that game – and our work on Tekken 7.

“If you throw another fighting game featuring those IPs into the ring, it’s just going to segment the audience. It wouldn’t be a very smart decision in regards to marketing. So if the timing arises where it is a good opportunity, then maybe the development on Tekken X Street Fighter will resume. But for the moment it is still on hold.”

At least Tekken 7 is out on June 2nd for Xbox One, PS4 and PC worldwide, right?

Tekken x Street Fighter is officially on hold, in large part because the developer does not want to split the fighting game community any further than it has already been split. Tekken game director Katsuhiro Harada talked to GameSpot and told them he wanted to keep the Tekken 7 and Street Fighter communities as happy as possible.

“We try to keep the core community in mind as well as the wider audience that wants to play these games,” Harada said. “Currently, the situation with fighting games is you have Street Fighter 5 and a large crowd out there waiting on Tekken 7. We don’t want to split these communities.” He added.

Because of these considerations, Harada said finding a good release window for Tekken x Street Fighter is hard right now. The news is hardly a massive shock, while Bandai Namco had claimed development was still ongoing in January of 2015, there had been very little news about the game since then. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if the hold is temporary or permanent.